Hit 50 coffee chats and realized I was doing it all wrong

I set a goal to have 50 quick virtual coffee chats with other small business owners this quarter, thinking more was better. I just hit that number yesterday and looked at my notes. Out of those 50, maybe 5 led to a real connection or a useful idea. The rest were just polite, surface-level talks that felt like a chore. What changed my mind was seeing that the 5 good ones all came from people I had a specific question for, like asking a local print shop owner how they handle rush orders. I was just collecting contacts before, not building anything. Now I'm going to aim for 10 chats next quarter, but only with people where I have a clear reason to talk. Has anyone else found that slowing down their networking made it work better?

3 comments

3 Comments

terryk102mo ago

Watched a buddy burn out trying to meet every new person at events. He switched to just talking to two people he actually wanted to learn from and got way more out of it.

joseph_ellis852mo ago

My friend did the same thing at a conference last year. Quality over quantity for sure.

ivan_mason2mo ago

So your friend needed a whole conference to figure out that talking to actual humans beats collecting business cards like they're pokemon? Did he get a trophy for finally getting it?